


Ghost in the Machine

by Bunn1cula



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Endor gothic, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt, geeks in the wild, hapless and hopelessly overworked, i.e. cussing at machines, much maligned mechanics, personified technology, unfriendly flora and fauna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17976014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunn1cula/pseuds/Bunn1cula
Summary: On the Endor moon, Moff Jerjerrod is reminded why he never joined the Galaxy Far Far Away Scouts.





	Ghost in the Machine

The light down here was queer.

Not queer as it could be on some alien planetary surfaces, especially the kinds with tholins or other amino acids in their atmosphere, which dispersed light particles in weird, yet generally predictable ways. It wasn’t like that here. 

For all intents and purposes, the atmosphere on what had come to be colloquially known as the Forest Moon (or less correctly, simply “Endor” after its less congenial gas giant parent) was analogous to countless other human-supportive environments around the galaxy. The biome itself wasn’t terribly different from the primeval coastal forests that still survived on Takodana and Naboo and even parts of Corellia. 

But here was different. Something else entirely. Perhaps it wasn’t even quantifiable. Intangible, unintelligible. Even wholly unscientific. 

Bantha shit, thought Jerjerrod, righting himself after tripping on a loose vine. Too many ludicrous folk stories from Feste over nightcaps of confiscated bootlocker hooch. Sithspit, they’d gotten desperate since Black Sun had diverted that last supply convoy from Coronet City.  

Ancient Entrallan ghost stories were distinctly sinister, but sobriety…now _that_ was terrifying. 

Still, there was a certain something about the air down on the moon. It was damp, heavy. It carried the kind of still chill that you felt in your bones even after thirty minutes in a warm shuttle. It made Jerjerrod uneasy and disagreeable. He would have donned one of his woolen greatcoats and buttoned it to the chin had everyone else on the installation not merely been wearing synthcanvas and light armor. 

He knew he was vastly out of his element down here among the savages, both native and enlisted, and he knew it showed. He didn’t need to advertise it with brushed virgin veermok fleece and kid leather boots on top of the vaguely disgusted expression he knew he habitually wore but couldn’t consciously help. 

Feste had been right. Coming down here was a bad idea. Everything that Jerjerrod could do technologically to determine what the fuck was wrong with the SLD-26 he could have handled from the overbridge on the station. Hell, he could probably do more from the command terminal in his quarters than he could down here. But the technician in him wanted to see the blasted thing, to fondle it and finesse out the kinks, while the superstitious artist twat in him wanted to anthropomorphize it and appease its vanity by appealing to it personally to get its shit together. 

Whichever method was the most effective remained a mystery, for the dish signal was still unstable. Still present, which counted for something, but such quibbling victories would instantly be forgotten in flaming, plummeting death should the onboard repulsors decide to fail as well. It was not time for claps on the back and cognac just yet. 

Weak rays of scattered sunlight fell through thick virescent foliage down to the rich earth. Jerjerrod made his way further afield from the manmade surroundings at the dish. He thought that if he could step back a ways, perhaps he may see something not evident with closer scrutiny. 

He refused security. For fuck’s sake, he was only going out a few meters. 

Deeper into the woods, the air became heavier. Perhaps even leaden. Its scent permutated into smooth petrichor and the cloying tinge of decomposition. Leaves becoming loam. Death begetting life; putrid and sweet and dense. 

It was dark. Far darker than he expected at this hour. He checked his wrist chrono; it was nearly 1900, perhaps an hour from nightfall. Stupidly, his stomach rumbled. Stupidly, because he’d not engaged in the ritual of dinner at this hour in likely twenty years. A lifetime. May as well have never been at all. 

Stop it. These were empty thoughts. Back to the task at hand. He slapped at a mosquito buzzing near his ear. Fuck nature, fuck the woods. Fuck circuitry on the fritz in this creepy environment. 

The dish sat on its spotless, hourly grunt-swept duracrete pad, enigmatic and mute as a monk about its malfunction. Bastard. _Tell me what it is you need._ “Tell me,” he muttered, “you stubborn son of a mongrel bitch.”

Something slithered on the ground behind him. Something big. He froze into carbonite. The hair on his arms and neck became needles. 

There was a whuff, and the sound of scratching through leaves and underbrush. Sithspit, he could _swear_ there was a caress of something hot and wet like breath on the back of his neck. Sheev motherfucking Palpatine on a jumpstick, there was something alive back there. His primate brain screamed _RUN_ but his feet were busted gravboots. 

Just when he pictured his roasted corpse turning on a spit and surrounded by fanged teddy bears, he looked down to observe something thick and green wrap around his right thigh. He lurched forward and out of its grasp. He turned his head just enough to the side to catch a glimpse of green tendrils and red mouth flesh and white teeth ( _on a plant?!_ ) and as he scrambled away his boot slipped and his right kneecap cracked into a rock. The pain was white hot but short-lived as he stumbled forward into an adrenaline-fueled charge for the dish maintenance building. 

The shuttle was warm. Stuffy, even. But Jerjerrod’s hands and feet ached with cold for hours afterwards until a holoconference on Coruscant Imperial Standard Time with the Joint Chiefs lulled him to sleep at his flimsi-laden desk. 


End file.
